Bing has been particularly bad at handling duplicate content. Bing didn’t have the same parameter handling capabilities that you can find in Google Webmaster Tools, but that has improved quite recently. Released rather quietly by the Bing team, parameter handling is now available in their webmaster tools interface. The engine has yet to implement support for the rel=canonical tag or the cross-domain canonical, but word on the street indicates that canonical tags will be supported in Q1 or Q2 of 2011.

Right before Christmas, Bing released a new feature allowing you to see incoming links to your site. The one note: Bing is only including links from content it includes in its index, so while this information is not all encompassing it certainly provides a nice overview.

Another nice feature introduced is a re-crawl and submit feature. If you need a page to be re-crawled immediately, you can manually ask for it in Bing Webmaster Tools. There is also the ability to submit a new URL so that Bing discovers it more quickly, however this is limited to 50 URLs per month – no doubt to limit spam attempts.

These aren’t likely to be the only changes we’ll see. A post late last year on the Bing Webmaster Central blog indicates that the team is looking at several improvements to the tool, including developing support for a crawl delay feature. This is pretty interesting; while the engines can support crawl delays specified in the robots.txt and you can slow down your crawl rate in Google Webmaster Tools, Bing is looking into perhaps allowing you to turn off crawling at certain times of the day. Some webmasters have been requesting this tool for a while now, but it has never been implemented; it could help larger websites meet user and engine demand where site capacity is an issue.

While Bing Webmaster Tools is still in development and a bit behind Google in terms of functionality, it will be interesting to keep an eye on the tool this year to see how it develops.

About the author
Charlotte Bourne is a Search Marketing Strategist with Mediative. You can follow Charlotte on Twitter @everydaylife.

We recently ran an analysis for one of our clients of the length of keyword query (whether it is one-word queries such as “dog” or two-word queries such as “dog catcher”, etc.) for the two weeks leading up to Google Instant compared to the two weeks prior. For this particular client, three-word search queries are the main driver of traffic to their site followed by two-word and four-word queries.

Here are the results:

We conducted a statistical analysis (thanks, Ian) to determine if the changes we saw pre and post Google Instant launch were actually statistically significant. Using a 95% confidence interval, only the change in one-word search queries could be considered statistically different (a decrease from before Google Instant to after). Interestingly, the vast majority of those one-word search queries were for branded terms. Given our knowledge of our client, we know that they released a new product in August which generated additional traffic to their site. The decrease in search volume could be attributed to falling off interest as people looking for their new product have already had the time to search it out and learn about it.

Our next areas for further analysis are:

- looking at clients of ours who are more dependent on one and two-word queries as a driver of traffic to their sites to see if people are increasing using Google auto-suggested search queries

- looking at the change in the number of impressions for client sites, which we’ll be doing for our clients once that data becomes available in Google Webmaster Tools.

The web crawler that fuels Bing’s search results will also be changing. As of October 1, MSNbot 2.0 will be replaced by “Bingbot”, which is currently being tested. For websites that have a crawl exclusion set up in their robots.txt file, Bing has said that the Bingbot will follow exclusions set up for the previous MSNbot – no change is required to the robots.txt file by webmasters though eventually you will want to have this updated. If you have directives in your robots.txt for both MSNbot and Bingbot, the new Bingbot will ignore directives for MSNbot and only follow directives for Bingbot, so make sure you don’t have conflicting information for the two different bots as different directives won’t both be followed.

The basics of SEO optimization are the same for Google and Bing: original content with targeted keywords, quality links, and well designed, cleanly coded sites. There are some differences in the Google and Bing user interfaces – Google’s blended results versus Bing’s related search results, quick tabs and categories – which means there are some different tactics for optimizing for some of the ‘finer details’ of SEO. If you don’t already have your website set up in Bing Webmaster Tools, you should make sure your site is set up and there are no crawl errors occurring that would prevent your site from being indexed or ranking well. I’ve noticed that Bing’s geotargeting can sometimes be off for foreign sites, so make sure Bing correctly recognizes the country and language your site is targeted to. If you are wondering how well you will do on the new Yahoo! search results page, check your current Bing rankings as these will be similar once the transition is complete.

Dubbed the Reasonable Surfer Patent by SEO Bill Slawski, this new link analysis methodology anticipates which links on a page are most likely to be clicked on by a user and assigns a relative ranking value accordingly. The more likely a link is to be clicked on by a “reasonable surfer” the larger share of available link juice it will be assigned.

In technical terms, the Google Reasonable Surfer Patent works like this:

A system generates a model based on feature data relating to different features of a link from a linking document to a linked document and user behavior data relating to navigational actions associated with the link. The system also assigns a rank to a document based on the model.

Reading the full text of the Google Reasonable Surfer Patent it quickly becomes clear that some tried and true interlinking strategies are about to go the way of the dinosaur. A once simple mathematical calculation dividing the number of links on a page by a ranking value and assigning each an equal share has become a complex equation involving the unpredictable variable of anticipated human behavior and a sliding scale of link juice flow. In short, the true value of a link on any given page will no longer be as transparent as it has been in the past. 

The Reasonable Surfer Patent eliminates the transparency of link juice flow which means changes to the way that link building and interlinking plans will be developed. Link flow SEO just became a much more strategic game. When deciding how to link within a site SEOs now need to be very aware of the impact of navigational elements and footers as well as the value of linking to pages like “About Us” throughout a site.

On pages that combine internal links with external links, SEOs will have to weigh the potential costs of lost link juice flow. If a user is more likely to click on the external link it could impact the rankings of any relevant internal links, making it a strategic play to remove the external link at the expense of providing true user value. The Reasonable Surfer Patent could end up cultivating a culture of protectionism among SEO analysts.

Because of its potential to cultivate a sense of protectionism the Reasonable Surfer Patent means that link building could become a much harder sell. SEO strategists may be weary of adding outbound links to their sites for fear that it will devalue internal links. While this fear is valid, excluding quality outbound links is not necessarily warranted.

The Google patent hints at the signals it will use to determine the behavior of a “reasonable surfer” toward a given link, and understanding these signals will give in-the-know SEOs the tools they need to benefit from the new patent.

The signals Google may use when identifying links to be clicked on by a “reasonable surfer” include:

Link position on the page – above the fold is best, the sooner you get a user’s attention the more likely they are to click through, also positioning key links in areas that users naturally ignore, like the left and right hand columns on a page, could devalue user interest ratings

Link relevance – the more relevant a link is to the content on the page the better, truly related resources are always more likely to be clicked on than unrelated or irrelevant content

Anchor text of the link – the more relevant the anchor text is to the content on a page the more likely it is to be weighted with a higher user interest value

Links in the body of the page text – links placed in the body of the page text are known to be clicked on more frequently than links or link groups that frame the content, the positioning of a link within the actual text of a page will be a strong signal

Presentation of the link – be it as an image, in a list, in a larger font size or in a different coloured text, the way in which you present your links will be a signal as to how likely a user is to click through

User ad aversion – avoid presenting links so that they may be confused for advertisements as this will likely be a negative signal, do not place links in areas that users traditionally associate with ads, like the right hand column of a page or in images that look like banners

Uniqueness of the link – redundant links on a page have long been an SEO no-no and while it may seem that increasing a link’s presence on a page would increase the likelihood of a click through, in reality it will most likely be perceived in the new schema as link stuffing

Navigational interlinking – including navigational or footer links on every page may no longer be an SEO must-do as they lead to link distraction and link juice flow dilution, even the coveted (and very useful) breadcrumb trail may be a negative signal for these reasons

If  you’re the CMO or VP of Marketing, what KPI’s do you really need to see so that you’re reasonably well informed about the performance of your organic search program against the half-dozen other channels you’re responsible for?

I had a great question from a client this week wondering if they should move from 2 KPI’s to 3 for their high level dashboards.

Hey Chris, quick question: other than traffic and revenue, what do you
think a good third high level KPI should be? The number of keywords driving traffic,
pages indexed vs pages submitted? Or are those too granular?

This is one of those questions that can spark an amazing discussion. I asked the rest of our team to weigh in, and here’s some of their thoughts.

• Dollar out, Dollar in. Organic investment (agency fees & in-house cost) vs the return.
• Conversions: newsletter sign-ups, whitepaper downloads, etc.
• In some cases, bounce rate (or other engagement indicators) may be relevant, depending on the strategic goals of the team.
• % of traffic from Search vs. direct or referral (break this down further to traffic from natural search)
• Ratio of non-branded vs. branded terms that are driving traffic
• Engagement mentions and social signals.

It’s tough to pick one more without flooding your exec with data they’re not likely to understand anyways.

In the end we decided on # of keywords driving traffic (and conversions thereof), which supports both general optimization, their content creation strategy and their community building efforts.

What about you? If there’s only 3 organic metrics you can show to the C-Suite or your Board of Directors, which ones do you pick?

We consult with clients on their linking efforts through items such as link audits and such.  We are well versed in link analysis and use tools to help identify issues with client’s link inventories.  We used advanced link operators such as these to evaluate link inventories for client’s competitors.  We used Google Webmaster Tools to gain insight in both internal and external link inventories for a given site.  We get the importance of link building, but there’s more to SEO than just link building.

The fact is that the search engine algorithms are fundamentally based on link popularity.  Yahoo for example, was started by David Filo and Jerry Yang got together  in February 1994 to organize their favorite sites on the Web.  They began compiling their lists of favorite links eventually turning Yahoo into the most popular destination on the Web.  Since then, most (all?) search engines that have followed have used link popularity as a key part of their search engine algorithm.  I take issue with this a little because based on my experience as a searcher the results that appear at the top of a given keyword query are not always relevant, and knowing that a reason a lot of these site appear is due to link popularity, I would love to see a shift in the algorithm.  For me relevant search results are exactly what I am looking for.  We tend to put a lot of trust into Google in terms of the search results that they present us, but you know as well as I that there are always potentially better results that are not on the first page of Google’s search results.  Why do you think Google is pushing things like personalization and blended results?  Why have they shifted focus to provide real-time search results? Websites that have artificially inflated their link inventories does not always equate to relevant results.  Again this is another reason as to why there is more to SEO than just link building.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand the importance of link building.  How you go about link building and the types of links you acquire  is your business.  For me, I am more in favor of the approach that the search engines communicate that they would like to see and that is building your link inventory in a natural manner.  A few years back this was referred to as “link-baiting”.  Over the years link building has changed and more recently how link popularity as part of the search algorithms continues to change.  Think about some of the reasons for this:

• Un-trustworthy link practices are tripping the filters and resulting in more penalties than ever before.
• There are a ton, most likely billions of non-linked “references” that are on the web through avenues such as social media messages, instant messages, emails, and tweets. There is a lot of relevant content here.  You cannot tell me that someone, at Google or the other search engines, is not evaluating this data to see how they can extract value and relevancy from this content.
• The ease of setting up a blog or website for the purposes of link building.  The content is being watered down and artificially linked web properties are polluting the search results
• More weight is being place on brands and
• The ability to acquire and purchase links has established an accelerated rate of link acquisition causing the engines to take more proactive action to address the volume and new unknown value of these links  

Rand Fishkin had a great piece on how link building is changing over at SEOmoz where he shared some similar reasons as to what he feels has caused this change or shift.  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-has-changed

So if there is more to SEO than link building, what does this “more” consist of?  Well there are two areas where you should be focusing your marketing efforts on:

The most important piece of SEO?  Where many will say link building and link popularity, we say content.  Content is the key to all that you do with any of your marketing efforts.  It does not matter if you are a B2B site or a B2C site.  Without useful, informative and somewhat unique and timely content, your online efforts may prove fruitless.  When we refer to content, we are not just talking about a traditional web page of content.  In 2010, content is dynamic and can be in the form of various guises including:

1. Keyword Research
2. Content

In terms of keywords, all search queries or questions begin with a keyword or a key phrase.  Recent trends show that longer key phrase queries are up with phrases that contain 8 or more words on the increase.  (This data has been supported by findings from Hitwise).  The fact of the matter is, without a sound keyword research process and keyword strategy, link building becomes somewhat irrelevant.  Keywords will always be a part of the search process.  At the heart of any search is a keyword.  Why do you think that the search engines spend so much time compiling user data and learning about semantic mapping?

The most important piece of SEO?  Where many will say link building and link popularity, we say content.  Content is the key to all that you do with any of your marketing efforts.  It does not matter if you are a B2B site or a B2C site.  Without useful, informative and somewhat unique and timely content, your online efforts may prove fruitless.  When we refer to content, we are not just talking about a traditional web page of content.  In 2010, content is dynamic and can be in the form of various guises including:

• Video
• Tweets
• Facebook status updates
• Blog posts
• Press releases
• Images
• Smart phone applications
• Podcast

The fact is people search looking to find timely information and in case you haven’t noticed, this habit has become social.  Of course Facebook and Twitter are the obvious examples, but think about all of the other environments where people go to find and share information.  From forums to YouTube to popular blogs, information has never been so accessible.  From an SEO perspective ensuring that your site features timely and useful information that can be shared will assist in improving the visibility of your site and web properties links or not.  To state the obvious, you need content to link to and from.  You can build your link inventory with great content. Should your SEO strategy be centered around link building?  We suggest no.  Should it be centered around content?  Our answer is yes.

A third area of SEO that always plays second fiddle to link building is on-page optimization.  Yet almost every site that we look at has missed some of the fundamentals in terms of on-page optimization.   On-Page optimization is a key piece to your SEO strategy that can be easy to address whereas link building can take a lot of resources.  Link building a key part of SEO?  Yes for sure but not the only part and not the most  important part from the way we see it. 

What would happen if Google made a fundamental shift with their algorithm and decided to place less value on link popularity?  All of the link building in the world would not help you.  In fact they have done this with past algorithm updates (think of algoruthm updates such as Florida).

The future of SEO will be less about links and more about content, the timely presentation of that content and the social dialogue about your brand.  You decide where you want to spend your time; link building or participating in a conversation with your audience?  The choice seems like an obvious one.

It seems as though there is always the question of where can we focus our SEO efforts?  This is a great question as there are many areas that may require attention.  Again, most clients are at different places when it comes to SEO.  However one area of SEO, for whatever reason that is often overlooked, is in the fundamentals:

• On-Page Optimization – title tags, meta data, on-page headings, page copy etc.
• Interlinking – mapping out where and when to interlink site pages
• Technical obstacles – coding issues
• Building links – improving your external link inventory

Quite often it means revisiting these elements to ensure that the site is fully optimized and providing the right messaging to the right people at the right time.  When it comes to SEO, it is all about focus.  An SEO roadmap helps the client focus on the activities that need to be addressed so that they can experience the greatest return with their online marketing efforts.

Focus:  Here and Now

Having a clear focus can make any marketing effort easier to act upon.  Focus simply means directing your attention towards something.  Students, for example,  focus their studies on a particular topic.  Restaurants focus their menus on specific meals. Olympic athletes focus on a specific sport.  The focus is clear and at times narrowed, but success is due in part to focus.  In business, it is easy to determine the have’s from and the also-rans based simply on focus.  Those businesses that have clear business objectives often perform better than businesses that have a lack of clear vision or focus. With online marketing and SEO, focus is just as important for success to be achieved.  From initial evaluation to the prioritizing of tasks to the implementation of recommendations to value justification to on-going maintenance, the ability to map out the “areas of focus” becomes increasingly important.

As a result, we established SEO roadmaps to help the client understand, and prioritize their SEO tactics and overall strategy.  The purpose of the SEO roadmap is many, but in essence, the SEO roadmap is used to assist  clients in:

1. Awareness – of the tasks that need to be completed to enjoy full SEO success
2. Prioritization -all of the items and tasks required to achieve organic success
3. Ensuring Accountability – SEO roadmaps illustrate who is accountable for a given task which is useful in identifying any potential hurdles or time management efforts that may be required to implement a given task
4. Illustration – of the overall goals and what the return we are striving for as they relate to the overall business objectives of the company.  To help tell the story.

The fact is that the SEO roadmap becomes a critical piece of intelligence for all parties involved.  It helps with the focus of where efforts need to be, where they should be and most importantly perhaps where they should not be.  (What I mean by this is, that we have seen companies who try to jump to the latest and greatest SEO tactic or buzz topic, when they in fact have not yet addressed the fundamentals or have even developed a strategy as to what they want to accomplish or achieve.

So what then should your SEO roadmap consist of?  Well this can vary but at the very least it should contain the following elements:

1. Action Items / Tasks
2. Description of Item/Task
3. Accountability – who will be responsible for implementation?
4. Estimated Completion Date

Quite often it is always a good idea to include a value justification piece as to what the result will be of acting on a specific action item or task.  Ideally the best SEO roadmaps are the ones that are not overly complicated.  The most effective SEO roadmaps are the ones that are simple, clear and concise.

If you want to refine your online focus, consider creating an SEO roadmap to help establish the path that you need to achieve your online goals.  From there, plug your SEO roadmap into your overall online marketing roadmap and continue to revisit your business objectives so that you remain focused towards achieving your goals.

• Who: Greg Jarboe (SEO-PR), Bill Barnes (Enquiro)
• What: Free Webinar about SEO and Online PR
• When: Tuesday, December 1, 2009. 11:00-11:30 am PST
• Where: Online – Sign Up Here
• Why: To learn about Managing SEO and Online PR

In our digital marketing world, public relations has made a clear and decisive shift online. Companies that can effectively create buzz and manage their reputation will outperform their competition.

Now more than ever, marketing executives have to understand:

* What to do if their company has a reputation management issue
* How SEO ties in to public relations
* The role video plays in PR for their industry
* How to measure the impact and opportunities for online PR
* The interplay of social media, buzz, and online PR

To wrap up Enquiro’s B2B Expert Series of webinars for this year, we’ve put together a special session on SEO and PR which is a “must-see” as you’re finalizing your 2010 marketing plans.

Join industry veteran Greg Jarboe in a live 30 minute session packed with proven tips and insight.

Presenter: Greg Jarboe – SEO-PR

The webinar will be presented by Greg Jarboe, the president and co-found of SEO-PR.

Greg has a history of speaking at SES (Search Engine Strategies), Marketing Sherpa Summits and other large SEO confrences.

With More than 25 years experience in corporate communications, he has lots of insight to offer on public relations.

Host: Bill Barns – Enquiro

Bill Barnes is the co-founder and EVP of Business Development at Enquiro Search Solutions.

Bill has more than 20 years of experience in advertising and promotions, 10 of those years have been focussed on search marketing.

Enquiro Webinar – Managing SEO and Online PR was originally posted by Jordan Kettner.

One great B2B content development strategy can be publishing transcripts of webinars, podcasts or conference calls. These transcripts can easily run into thousands of words, and pagination can be a good choice for readability, however it quickly becomes a duplicate content issue. One client recently had a webinar transcribed which ran into 14 pages. To start with, that potentially creates 14 sets of Meta Data to be written, and 14 different places where people could link. While the content is broken into pages around the themes within the webinar, it’s all around a topic which is quite niche to begin with.

This is a classic case where existing best practices would have tried to focus the authority on the first page, and attempted to reduce the duplicate potential of the other pages by using a combination of links, 301 redirects and the Robots Exclusion Protocol. Now we can use a much more straightforward solution in the canonical link tag.

In the example I mentioned before, you would implement the tag across all 14 pages. The tag has the effect of telling the search engines "this is the preferred version, and the one we like the most". It also transfers signals like PageRank to the canonical (preferred) URL. The tag would look like this:

 <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/first-page.html" />

This will help focus link juice and authority, as well as help deal with possible duplicate content issues.

Well this is something that sometimes online marketers tend to overlook.  On-Page optimization.  I have written about this on a number of occasions, but thought that the time was right to re-explore this topic.  We tend to receive a number of questions about on-page optimization, so it definitely needs further clarification.  We have received questions such as:

• Would you know, or be able to find out, approximately how much lift in conversion/page views is usually experienced from optimizing <insert page type here>  pages? and
• Do you have any high level data to share regarding the optimization of page content?
• Is on-page optimization more important than off page optimization?

All are great questions.  However, it is difficult to answer as SEO and on-page optimization are simply not as easy to measure as is a sponsored ad where you know what you put in and you can see "what you get out" (of the paid ad). In addition, to it becomes difficult to isolate on-page optimization factors.  Furthermore, there are a number of items that work hand in hand when in comes to optimization of your website.  On-Page optimization is just one piece of the puzzle to factor in.  There are off page factors and items such as building your external link inventories that will contribute to the success that you have in the online world.

Here’s what we do know:

Fact:  On-Page Optimization is necessary to gain visibility in the Search Engine Results. 

Without optimized title tags, meta data, URLs and page copy, you are not going to be found in the search results.

Fact:  Search Engine crawling and indexing is all about finding relevant content.

Without on-page optimization and promotion of relevant content that speaks to your target audience, your web property will have a difficult time in being treated as an authority for a given topic.  Without being an authority, chances are you will lack that online visibility. Without visibility you will miss out on traffic and thus page views.

Fact:  Without an optimized "SEO landing page" being found in the Search results, the chances of a conversion are virtually nil.

You simply will not be found in the prime real estate of the Search results without on-page optimization.  If no one (i.e. the Searcher) cannot find your page in the first place, the chance of a conversion happening disappears.

Fact:  Search Engines (and searchers) are looking for unique & relevant content.

Part of on-page optimization means creating and communicating content that is relevant and useful.  Google is not just a place to "spit a webpage" of copy out.  The engineers at Google and the other major Search Engines work hard to try and return the best results that they can given the search query.  Content is the key to your online success.

Just What is On-Page Optimization?

On-page optimization is the process by which various elements on an individual web page are established and structured so that the page can be found by the search engines for a given keyword or key phrase.  The part of SEO that deals with page level creation to help inform search engines about the topic of a page.

While on-page optimization will not guarantee top billing within a search engine result, it does have a direct impact on what is shown in the results pages and can entice click through via title and meta description.  Based on my experience in Organic Search, on-page optimization will always get you farther than the lack thereof. On-page optimization is a critical component of SEO and although some may feel that it contributes very little to online success (especially when it comes to conversions), the reality is that without on-page optimization you are going to have an uphill battle trying to reach your target audience.  I have previously discussed the difference between B2C and B2B SEO, where I touched on the importance of on-page optimization.  One of the items I touched on was that as a fundamental component of SEO, on-page optimization is often overlooked by large business.  For whatever reason big businesses understand SEO and the importance of on-page optimization yet they fail to leverage it.  The question is why?  Why are so many companies and web sites overlooking on-page optimization as part of their search strategy?  Perhaps it’s the shiny new object syndrome where the fascination is with items such as Twitter or widgets or other technologies.  Perhaps it’s because these sites use proprietary content management systems they are limited to what they can do in terms of on-page optimization.  Whatever the case may be, on-page optimization needs to be addressed and should be addressed prior to all other organic marketing efforts.

With the client that I have worked with, the ones that have had the greatest success are the ones that have addressed the fundamentals and have taken care of on-page optimization issues.  For example back in 2005 we helped a client re-optimize their website.  We worked with them to create unique and relevant title tags, meta tags and consulted with them on page URLs as well as page copy.  The result?  Within a matter of months, the number of pages indexed in Google (and other major search engines) increased and items such as page views increased by 125% from when we started working with the client to current. At the peak pageviews increased by 191%.  With this particular client, organic search engine traffic is up by 1200%.  This is due in no small part to the on-page optimization efforts.

With another client,we spent the better part of a year consulting with them on their pending website redesign.  Part of the focus was to address lingering on-page optimization issues. Three months post redesign, where part of the focus was on on-page optimization, the client saw an increase in pages views of 7.3% as well as an increase in revenue generated from search by about 36% when compared to the previous year (and this is a down economy).  While not all of the this can be entirely attributed to on-page optimization, there is a definite boost from optimizing their site pages to ensure that titles, meta data, page copy and interlinking were addressed.

So what does it take to address on-page optimization issues?  Well there are no secrets here.  There are really five or six items that need to be addressed.

Components of On-Page Optimization

At the very least there are six main components of on-page optimization that should be addressed to assist you with gaining visibility in the search results of the engines.  Until the search engines make algorithm changes that may affect these items, the following should be considered when optimizing your web pages.

1. Title Tags - A site’s title tag is by far one of the most important on-page optimization element.  Titles should be around 60-70 characters (although Google has been known to index around 1,100) and feature important key phrases near the beginning with a branded element at the end.  Ideally you want the title to read well and be differentiated from the competitors as this may help entice the click from a search results page where the title is currently shown.
    
2. Meta Tag Optimization - meta data is simply data about data.  It lets the search engines know about what your information is about.  Meta data helps communicate what the topic of your page is about.   You may remember that the search engines when crawling your web pages look for mini themes to help determine what your site is an authority on.  A descriptive meta description can help inform the engines as to what the page is about. 
    
3. On-Page Headings - ideally each web page that you have should be about a single topic.  As a result this topic can be highlighted in the main heading of the page.  Some keys to success include placing relevant keywords in the heading and having the heading in an <h1> tag as these tags carry the most weight with the search engines.  The heading tag should also be placed higher up within the page coding to help the search engines crawlers access this content.
    
4. Page Copy - I’m not sure how many times we can emphasize the importance of page copy.  This is why people come to your site.  They are looking for information as are the search engine crawlers.  Providing well optimized copy that is keyword rich, somewhat unique and informative will help your site gain visibility in the search engines.  You want to become an authority on a given topic?  Create content about it.  The cool thing about page copy is that is can take different forms.  HTML text is still preferred for search engine optimization, but this can come in the form of blog content, user generated content, articles and news releases.  In addition you can have images and videos to provide a richer content experience on your site.  When writing actual page copy try to include your important key phrases two to three time ideally as high up on the page as possible to help the search engines determine the topic /theme of the page.  It is important that the content is unique and not just re-purposed from another site or from some vendor material that you were presented.  As a general rule of thumb try to feature at least 150-200 words of unique content on your site pages.  In some case 400-600 words will do even better.  Page copy allows to to ensure that you have adequate keyword density for important phrases again helping communicate the theme of the page to the search engines.
    
5. Page URLs - This is key, even more so as of late.  Having a relevant search engine friendly URL can go a long way in terms of on-page optimization.  Having relevant keywords in the URLs doesn’t hurt and keeping the URL short and memorable is beneficial as well.  Try to limit the number of dynamic parameters in your URLs and if you have the ability to re-write your URLs into clean ones, do it.  While the engines will index dynamic strings, short static URLs will resonate better with the user.
    
6. Anchor Text - ahh linking the lifeblood of the Internet.  As part of successful on-page optimization you need to get into the habit of using keyword rich anchor text to interlink your site pages.  This is a key factor used by the algorithms to determine the Inbound Liking Quality of links.  This is one of the key factors used when by the engines when ranking web pages.  Well interlinked pages can help increase page views of the site as users can easily navigate the site to find the information that they are looking for.  When measuring site stickiness, things like page views per session can let you know how many pages users are viewing.

We could get into greater detail in each of these areas, but we have done this previously and there are also some existing resources that provide additional insight including:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/on-page-optimization-a-complete-walkthrough/6746/
http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/the-best-damn-o.php
http://www.seo-theory.com/2007/12/05/an-on-page-optimization-seo-checklist/
http://www.widerfunnel.com/landing-page-optimization/the-six-landing-page-conversion-rate-factors
http://www.searchengineguide.com/scott-allen/conversion-optimization-part-of-internet-marketing.php

So if you are asking yourself why is on-page optimization important just remember that On-Page Optimization has a direct impact on Search Engine activity.  From search engine crawlers to indexing of pages to the ranking of results, on-page optimization will impact where you show up and how users engage with the content that they are presented with.